I’m sure you’re all just like me and waiting anxiously to hear the results from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, whence this very day we will find out from Punxsy Phil whether spring will come early this year or we have to wait six more weeks (pro tip: it’s always going to fall on March 20th, or occasionally, the 21st). As ridiculous as the holiday might seem to me, though, there are things about groundhogs and Groundhog Day that are pretty interesting.
English is not the easiest language to learn: we already know that. There seems to be an exception to every rule. I before E, except after C, for example. What about cover, hover, and over?
In a sign of the times though I am not entirely certain it is a good one, the word of the year is a term used in electronic cigarette smoking.
In a series that features various resources with specific interests, this particular one caught our interest and irony. It provides the tables of contents of a selection of Classics, Near Eastern Studies, and Religion journals, both in text format and through a Web search program.
We all know Roget as the word man, but he clearly was one brilliant man who loved all sorts of things, words among them. Jen Bryant and Melissa Sweet captured that in their latest release, The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus. The authors approach presents Roget’s lifelong passion for word lists as well as much more.
Segue is an odd word. It's conjugated versions defy normal grammar and spelling rules, i.e. segueing, segued, etc. Pronunciation is a whole new challenge as many understand the meaning and use it in day to day conversation, but when it comes time to spell it -- that is a whole different story.
Many linguist believe that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn and not because of the pronunciation challenges, but for the exceptions to every rule. For us word geeks, this is more than just humorous, it is educational (and a bit frustrating). This was found in the blog post, "Why is today the first, not the oneth?" in the blog, Wordlady.
I like games, all types but especially word games. My love of Scrabble was developed early on as my mother and I would play for hours on end. My siblings had no interest so it was quality mom and me time that we still take advantage of when time and situations allow. That doesn't happen as often as I'd like, but I do appreciate her passing on a passion for words, books and vocabulary to me.
I assume that the spell-checking feature in most software application is driven by some kind of dictionary or other controlled vocabulary. The user can usually add to this list or import a custom dictionary, but the stock set of “acceptable” words comes standard. Now, I understand that different organizations call for different hyphenation usage standards, so I’m not usually surprised when I’m typing and it flags an otherwise perfectly cromulent1 hyphenated word.